Summer Reading 2013

The Grass is Singing, by Doris Lessing

First Line:  Mary Turner, wife of Richard Turner, a farmer at Ngesi, was found murdered on the front veranda of their homestead yesterday.

"Because he had never yet earned his own living, he thought entirely in abstractions.  For instance, he had the conventionally "progressive" ideas about the color bar, the superficial progressiveness of the idealist that seldom survives a conflict with self-interest."

The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

First line:  The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor-apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly-man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street.

Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi

First line:  Kweku dies barefoot on a Sunday before sunrise, his slippers by the doorway to the bedroom like dogs.

The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham

First line:  She gave a startled cry.

Narrative of Sojouner Truth

First line:  The subject of this biography, Sojourner Truth, as she now calls herself, but whose name originally was Isabella, was the daughter of James and Betsey, slaves of one Col. Ardinburgh, Jurle, Ulster County, N.Y.

The Herbfarm Cookbook by Jerry Traunfeld

First line:  If you're learning to cook with fresh herbs, you'll do well by starting with soups, for in a soup everything is told in a single spoonful.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

First line:  Then there was the bad weather.

Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

First line: The patient, an old-fashioned man, thought the nurse made a mistake in keeping both of the windows open, and her sprightly disregard of his protests added something to his hatred of her.